Cousin fun

We had a great visit with our family in San Antonio last weekend. The kids were thrilled to hang out with their cousins. They had a great time playing with everyone and were excited about the great big sleep over we had with them.


We enjoyed celebrating our nieces birthday and catching up with family. I stayed up well into the night enjoying a visit with my sister in laws and was quite tired the next day. Lucky for me, I got a little nap in at John's parents house before we drove back.
We enjoyed the weekend and it was a nice visit for everyone.

And the winner is . . .

AUSTIN!

Today Austin's class had a Spelling Bee.

We've known it was coming for a couple of weeks and Austin was very excited about it. He loves reading and spelling, so it was right up his alley. There are lots of bright kids in his class and I knew there were plenty of them who were up to the challenge. Yesterday they had a trial run and Austin was the runner up. He said he got really nervous and missed a word that he knew. He got over his jitters today and was able to spell his way to the end. They went into their tie breaker list and

I-N-T-R-O-D-U-C-T-I-O-N

was the winning word.

It was fun to get his phone call in the middle of the day announcing the good news that he had won. Hooray!

Good job Austin!

As I was tucking him in to bed tonight, Austin told me that he wants to be a world class spelling bee champion so that he can win trillions of dollars. That would be great.

I hope he'll share his winnings.

Climber

Every time I turn around, Cameron is climbing on something. He also finds great joy in pulling all of the toilet paper off the rolls. Yesterday he made his way up onto the dining room table and rolled out the entire roll of paper towels. What a great mixture of two favorite activities!

He gave me a grand smile when I discovered him & asked what he was up to. He looked over his handy-work and reported, "no-no, no-no!"

I guess the first step is admitting that there is a problem, right?

Next will be controlling the urge to make big messes when you know you aren't supposed to. I guess that comes in another 15 years or so...hopefully. ;-)


It was sure cute though, and not really that big a deal since it made him awfully happy!

Team Suits

Brookie is VERY excited for her first swim meet tomorrow!
She has been counting down the days all week.

At swim practice yesterday the kids got their new team suits.
Well, that just made Brooke's month! Not only is she big enough to be on the swim team and gets to have her first meet this weekend, but a cute new swimsuit that matches her friends?? Does it get any better? Not for her. She was ecstatic! She and her friend Taylor danced around after practice in their matching suits with permanent smiles glued on their faces. It was very cute.

Brooke told me several times yesterday evening and this morning, that she LOVES her new suit. It took some convincing to get her to take it off last night. She wanted to sleep in it. She even asked if she could wear it to school, under her clothes of course, so she could show her class. :-) I promised we'd share pictures with the class after the meet.

I'm so glad that she's a part of something that she is so excited about!

She just adores Austin and the fact that she has joined him on the swim team has just made her feel so grown up.
Both kids are right at home in the pool and excited for their first meet. I'm excited for them too.

I'm sure they'll do great!

ABC Project

Austin made this video at school. He looked up all the facts and pictures. Then he put them all together and did all the voice over narration. His Discovery class worked on this project for many weeks, as they learned the ins and outs of research. Here is his end result. He was very proud if it and we are very proud of him. Enjoy...

Definitely my son

I love Austin, he's a good boy. And he's definitely a boy. He likes to be loud & make obnoxious noises, (especially at the table.) He teases and taunts his sister and plays his share of electronic games. He does plenty of other standard boy stuff too, I'm definitely not worried about his masculinity.

He doesn't get those things from me though. Those are definitely boy genes. However, he gets a few other things from me and this week we had a little victory for the female compassion that I'm passing on!

As I've previously mentioned, my husband is a fisherman. Therefore, the kids are too, and they really like to do it. They don't kill the fish. Don't get me wrong, we eat fish. It's Austin's favorite food, but the kids have never been involved in that part of fishing. They always throw the fish back after they catch them and admire them.

Well, this weekend John took Austin fishing with another plan in mind. They wanted to catch crawfish and he intended to use the fish they caught for crawfish bait. This inevitably meant death for the fish. Well, Austin would have no part of that. I wasn't there, but I guess he raised quite a stink about not killing the fish. So, instead of using it for bait to catch crawfish, they let it go. Woo hoo! That's my boy.

I actually never heard the end of this story until the day after it happened. You see when they got home, I was so busy complaining about them being late that I didn't get to hear all about their fishing trip. Had I known it was so noteworthy, I would have stopped and listened long enough to get the details of how my compassionate little boy saved a fish!

Silly, I know, but I'm glad some of my sensitivity is wearing off on him. I'm glad he has a soft heart. I wouldn't have wanted to kill the fish either. :-)

Fishing

It's in the blood in this family.

Fishing has long been a favorite Daddy & Austin activity.

It is now also a favorite Daddy & Brookie activity.

She was very excited to catch this one, completely on her own.
They threw it back, of course, but not before snapping a shot for bragging rights.

She's quite the little fisher-girl. :-)

So sweeet!

This morning John and I were laying in bed, 1/2 awake, waiting for the snooze on our alarm clock to go off again when we heard Brooke coughing. She has been getting over a bit of a cough this week and was having a coughing spell in her bed. We could hear her from our room down stairs and John had just commented to me that he felt bad for her.

Then we heard something else that immediately brought smiles to our faces. We heard Cameron, on the baby monitor. From his room down the hall from hers, he heard his sister coughing too and it must have woken him up.

He didn't cry though.

He just said, in his barely mature enough to pronounce words, sweet little concerned voice . . .

"sissy ?. . . sissy?" pause . . . "o-tay ??" (in an obvious question form.)

Then more of the same . . .

"sissy? awww, sissy. o-tay?" . . . "oh sissy, otay baby?"

Then he repeated his concerns for her until Daddy went upstairs to get him. Of course he wanted to go straight in to see his sissy for a snuggle. :-)

It was soooooo very sweet to hear him that John and I both woke right up and asked each other if we had heard it correctly. I guess if our toddler who can barely even put words together is showing such sweet compassion for his sister, we're doing something right around here. It was a happy parenting moment. I'm so glad they love each other!

Music to my ears

I love music. I always have. But something that I love even more is seeing my kids love music. Austin loves music & really likes to play around on the piano playing things by ear. So, at the end of his lessons, his teacher, (whom we adore) has a little "jam session" with him. They play whatever they want and improvise as they go. (He likes it a lot, since that's his favorite kind of playing.) This week, he's stuck on this old familiar song that everyone loves to play. It's fun to see him enjoy it so much and any music that my kids make is music to my ears. :-)

By the way, the video is really short, because I just grabbed my cell phone and got a few seconds of it...

A few of my favorite things...

OK, I admit it, I've been in a really bad mood the past few days. But I'm done with that. Not that I need a reason to be happy, but here are a few of my favorite things that make me really happy . . .

No, we aren't really potty training, just interested in the potty. But seriously, how cute is he?? He makes me smile and laugh out loud, every single day.

This past Sunday I sent my kids up to get dressed in the clothes that I had laid out for them to wear to church. This is how they came down...

Not exactly what I had in mind, but how could I not smile?

Her smiles are contagious, yes, but eating watermelon at a picnic at the park on a warm evening in Texas... doesn't get much better than that.

This little man is obsessed with popcorn. He would eat it all day long if he could. To listen to him giggle and watch his eyes light up as it pops out of the popper, it's quite delightful.


My family, chillin' together, our favorite place to be on a Friday night. I sure love these guys!

Good friends who laugh with me, cry with me, and love me inspite of my flaws. . . I have many and I am very thankful for them.

There are so many things I have to smile about. So, I guess I should be smiling more often... that's my goal this week, to smile. Because there are lots of reasons to do it.

Keepin' on

I have this poem hanging in my laundry room. It's always been a favorite of mine. Some days it means more to me than others though. Not sure if it's because I did a lot of laundry today and visited it many times, or if it's because it's just what I needed to hear today. Whatever the reason, I appreciated it today just a little bit more than I have on other days.

"When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,

When the road you're trudging seems all uphill,

When the funds are low and the debts are high,

And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,

When care is pressing you down a bit,

Rest, if you must, but don't you quit.

Life is queer with its twists and turns,

As every one of us sometimes learns,

And many a failure turns about,

When he might have won had he stuck it out;

Don't give up though the pace seems slow--

You may succeed with another blow.

Often the goal is nearer than,

It seems to a faint and faltering man,

Often the struggler has given up,

When he might have captured the victor's cup,

And he learned too late when the night slipped down,

How close he was to the golden crown.

Success is failure turned inside out--

The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,

And you never can tell how close you are,

It may be near when it seems so far,

So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit--

It's when things seem worst that you must not quit."

- Author unknown

I sure like to be reminded about the silver tint on the clouds,

because sometimes on days like today, it's hard to see it.

Big girl sleep over...

We haven't done sleep overs in the past and don't plan to much in the future, but this was a special event with all the girls in Brooke's kindergarten class. Plus, Mom was a chaperon, so that made it fun for the whole family!

Brooke was THRILLED to be a part of her first big girl sleepover, and I was thrilled to be there with her. :-) We had snacks, watched movies, played games, read books, made pancakes, etc. The fun and giggling went well into the night and resumed first at first light (maybe earlier.)

She made some great memories with her friends.

Austin had a buddy to hang out with, and they had a great time playing lots of Wii and DS. Cameron was in heaven with all those little girls to "Mommy" him. I enjoyed the company of a good friend and gracious host. It was a win-win for all of us. And yes, we all stayed the night. (John was out of town.) It was lots of fun! Even big girls like to have sleep overs now and then. :-)

Field trip!

Cameron and I had lots of fun joining Brooke on her final kindergarten field trips this past week. We had a fun time at the Wildflower Center and an even better time at the zoo. Most of all, it was just nice to hang out with my kids. They had lots of fun hanging out with each other too. Those too are buddies, for sure!